At the start of the pandemic, I expected all of us on the frontline to get the c-word. Then three months on, I had no symptoms, felt well and hadn’t needed to isolate at all. I began to wonder if I was a lucky asymptomatic one, just happened to be immune or maybe my PPE donning and doffing skills were sublime. I began to have hope I would see the crisis through. And then Monday night happened.
My test confirmed two things this morning: firstly, that the test isn’t that bad after all and secondly, I have COVID. I was glad that the clear explanation for my symptoms had been congruous with the test result. It was an easy diagnosis to make but as a doctor, it is far more rewarding when a diagnosis is confirmed than just excluded.
Physically, I felt less lethargic this morning but still on edge, prodromal perhaps. On any other day, I might have considered popping a vitamin tablet for what it’s worth but I know I have it now and the risk isn’t becoming unwell, it’s about becoming more unwell. My palms were sweaty and clammy but I had no recorded fever. My legs felt cold and like penguins found comfort in being close to one another, whether crossed or uncrossed. My smell and taste continued to dessert me and my maxillary sinuses occasionally throbbed, drawing my attention back to the anosmia. I had no cough or sore throat. My breathing felt fine going up the stairs. I just felt off.
My colleague Liz had mentioned, ‘you weren’t quite yourself on Monday’ and I tried to reflect and thought: in what way? The whole team were supportive and sending me messages throughout the day. But there was something else. Admittedly, there was a niggling sense of failure – this week questioned the value of all the precautions I had taken on the wards. If I was going to get it, should I have just gotten it quicker and become potentially immune? Emotionally, I felt that I had fallen on the frontline. The reality that I wasn’t by magic, immune to the virus, I found strangely irritating and now the unlikely but not impossible risk of losing my sense of smell and/or taste for a long time played on my mind.
Lunch for example was soup and buttered bread, not that it mattered whether the bread was buttered or not. I could honestly not even tell you what flavour the soup was, as Fi had made it and the carton, readied for recycling already. The colours on my plate had lost all meaning.
My colleague Steve and I had a chat about my symptoms. We discussed whether the senselessness would make us opportunistic and eat all ‘the good stuff’ whilst we could bear it. But for me, I continued to nibble on snacks during the day. Every so often I would crack open a remnant of Easter, in the hope that suddenly I would be able to taste chocolate once more. In conclusion, it was about hope and habit.
I started to feel unusually fatigued at half-five. My concentration was trying to abandon me. A hot shower helped a little.
Over dinner, I had to ask Fi whether the chicken soup I was drinking tasted nice or bland, so I could imagine what it tasted like, but I’m a doctor, a scientist in some ways. I began not to think about what I couldn’t taste but what I could eat because of this, starting with half a lime.
I did not even flinch. I could tell it was supposed to be sour, the fizzle and squeak when I bit into it spoke volumes, but I tasted nothing at all. Perhaps I could turn this curse into a blessing. Now I just needed to enter a chilli-eating competition. How terrible it would be if I suddenly regained my taste before the final chilli though…
As I lay in bed that night, I thought back to a conversation with my friend, Mo who had called to check on me. He asked how it was to be functioning on three out of five senses. I reminded him I’m half-blind so it’s actually two-and-a-half. Essentially that makes me halfway to being a senseless person, or halfway to being normal. Depends which perspective one wishes to take…
Every few days... 